Tropical Storm Ida shuts down some Gulf oil production; Oil prices inch up

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Nov 09 2009 | 0 Comments

There are several oil platforms directly in the path of Tropical Storm (but was once Hurricane) Ida. Production on some Shell, Exxon and Chevron platforms has come to a stop for right now, but the storm is expected to leave the area sometime tomorrow. So far, Chevron has shut down its Tahiti, Blind Faith and Petronius platforms and Exxon has pulled all of its nonessential staff from platforms that are in the path of the storm.

The Tropical Storm isn’t very powerful right now and has weakened since leaving the Yucatan peninsula. Currently, it’s projected path has it making landfall somewhere near Mobile, Alabama. Thankfully, the waters near the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida have cooled this year. Since mid-October, the weather in these areas has been quite unseasonably cool and that causes any tropical systems to really “lose steam.”

With some of the platforms shutting down production in the Gulf, oil prices will likely inch up, but not soar like they do when there is a greater demand for oil or a large storm finds itself in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil has neared $79 a barrel again in trading today. This is probably more because of the weak U.S. dollar rather than the Tropical Storm.

I suppose, for those living on the coastlines of the United States, this year was extremely mild as opposed to how it could have been. Even though many places saw lots of rainfall over the summer (much, MUCH more than usual, especially in the Southeast), there weren’t many hurricanes to make landfall and do a lot of damage this year. Now hurricane season is almost over.

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Tags: path of the storm, oil platforms, yucatan peninsula